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This paper aims to study whether the adoption of an entry mode that fits the social trust level contributes to the improvement of foreign subsidiary performance.

The authors used the Probit model, linear regression, strategic fit approach and instrumental variable regression. The sample was made up of 11,095 observations of Chinese multinational enterprises' foreign subsidiaries in 54 countries from 2005 to 2020.

The results suggest that a host country with a high level of social trust results in fewer difficulties for enterprises in gaining legitimacy, thus foreign subsidiaries are more likely to select the wholly owned entry mode. The results also show that the effect is contingent on the formal institutions of host countries. The results of the mechanism test suggest that social trust influences subsidiaries' entry mode choice by reducing information asymmetry, costs and uncertainty risks. This study further finds that selecting a fit entry mode based on social trust level substantially increases foreign subsidiary performance and this effect is more significant when multinational enterprises (MNEs) are state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

The main limitation of this paper is its only focus on foreign subsidiaries of Chinese MNEs, which may limit the generalizability of research findings.

This paper responds to the call for conducting more research on informal institutions. Findings highlight the critical role of informal institutions in helping foreign subsidiaries in gaining legitimacy in host countries and the essentialness of selecting a fit entry mode based on the informal institutions of host countries for the development of foreign subsidiaries.

The current literature lacks discussion on the effects of synergy among multiple factors at different levels on foreign subsidiary performance. The purpose of this paper is to explore the configuration of factors affecting foreign subsidiary performance.

The methodology adopted in this paper is the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The data are obtained from 125 foreign subsidiaries of Chinese MNCs through questionnaire surveys and secondary data.

The research results reveal that five configurations of antecedent conditions predict high foreign subsidiary performance, and the other two configurations predict not-high performance.

This paper’s main limitation is its only focus on foreign subsidiaries of Chinese MNCs, which means that the findings should be generalized with precaution. The most valuable implication is to identify the configurations that lead to high and not-high foreign subsidiary performance.

This paper addresses the question of how interdependent factors at the national and corporate level are beneficial to foreign subsidiaries’ performance.

This study makes the following contributions to current theories: It provides (1) new insights for understanding the complex causality between antecedent conditions and foreign subsidiary performance and (2) a practical reference for the multinational operations of foreign subsidiaries.

This study aims to contribute to the existing institutional literature by examining the impact of regional social trust on foreign firm performance.

In this study, 10,286 annual observations of foreign firms in China from 2008 to 2020 are used to test the research hypotheses using an ordinary least square regression model.

Social trust can improve foreign firm performance by reducing operating costs and increasing risk-taking capacity, while formal institutions and economic policy uncertainty strengthen the positive relationship between social trust and foreign firm performance. Moreover, the results of the heterogeneity test show that the positive relationship is only manifested in the samples from the eastern region and is more pronounced in the samples of small- and medium-sized foreign firms and non-manufacturing foreign firms.

This study makes a theoretical contribution to the literature on institutional theory and foreign firm performance, as well as providing practical guidance to foreign firms on how to improve their performance.

The development of tourism around Wolong Nature Reserve changes the local communities' ways of life. This study discusses how ecotourism affects the households' use of their capitals, the livelihood strategies as well as illustrates the impact on the habitats in the reserve through Department for International Development’s (DFID) Sustainable Livelihood Framework (SLF) with data collected during fieldwork.

The study focuses on (1) Calculating Livelihood Capital Index. (2) The effects of livelihood capitals on livelihood strategy were calculated by multinomial logistic regression.

The study has yielded the following results: (1) In general, tourism promotes people's livelihood capitals. The growth in different types of households under tourism settings is ranked as full-time tourism operators > part-time tourism operators > traditional living households. (2) Tourism development mainly shifts livelihood strategies in two ways. Firstly, travel operating replaces some traditional practices that make livings; secondly, increased needs for potherbs and herbs from tourists let households enter into the hills to pick the plants more actively, which intensifies the destruction of giant panda's habitats. (3) Nine types of livelihood capitals indicators, namely farmland quality, distance between house and roads, number of laborers, average housing area, average income per person, whether family members being village cadres, and ever having received skills training shape livelihood strategies in different levels.

Three discussions are drawn from the study: (1) Enhancing the exploit for tourism resources to form a diversified competition. (2) Introducing herb growing to fulfill tourists' needs and improve people's livelihood in the meantime. (3) Optimizing the tourism surveillance and management system and improving the rules and regulations.

Kelp is widely productive and inexpensive. The purpose of this study is to explore kelp liquid (KL) as an environment-friendly water-based lubricant, which is expected to replace some industrial lubricants and protect the environment while satisfying lubricating performance.

In this experiment, the soaked kelp was broken up by a wall-breaking machine to get the KL by a centrifuge. Elements and crystal structure of KL samples were characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and Raman spectra. The friction test is carried out by the relative movement of the polyethylene ball and the aluminum disk on the friction tester.

Friction experiments showed that 0.1 Wt.% KL has a good lubrication effect, and the average coefficient of friction is 0.063 under the condition of applying a 10 N load and moving at a speed of 2.0 cm/s. KL has good thermal conductivity with excellent cooling effect and high intermolecular force which makes high viscosity for excellent lubricating behavior, at the meantime molecules in solution remain stable which shows an excellent dispersibility.

At present, the research on kelp mainly focuses on its medicinal value and abundant nutritional value, and the research on its lubrication effect is less. Based on this situation, this paper explored the characteristics of KL as an environmentally friendly lubricant, which is expected to be used as a green cutting fluid.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of enterprise is influenced by the enterprise digital transformation. In addition, this study explains how enterprise digital transformation affects ESG performance.

The sample covers 4,646 nonfinancial companies listed on China’s A-share market from 2009 to 2021. The study adopts the fixed-effects multiple linear regression to perform the data analysis.

The study finds that enterprise digital transformation has a significant inverted U-shaped impact on ESG performance. Moderate digital transformation can improve enterprise ESG performance, whereas excessive digital transformation will bring new organizational conflicts and increase enterprise costs, which is detrimental to ESG performance. This inverted U-shaped effect is more pronounced in industrial cities, manufacturing industries and enterprises with less financing constraints and executives with financial backgrounds. Enterprise digital transformation mainly affects ESG performance by affecting the level of internal information communication and disclosure, the level of internal control and the principal-agent cost.

The government should take multiple measures to encourage enterprises to choose appropriate digital transformation based on their own production behaviors and development strategies, encourage them to innovate and upgrade their organizational management and development models in conjunction with digital transformation and guide them to use digital technology to improve ESG performance.

This study shows that irrational digital transformation cannot effectively improve the ESG performance of enterprises and promote the sustainable development of the country. Enterprises should carry out reasonable digital transformation according to their own development needs and finally improve the green and sustainable development ability of enterprises and promote the sustainable development of society.

This study examines the relationship between enterprise digital transformation and ESG performance. Different from the linear relationship between the two in previous major studies, this study proves the inverse U-shaped relationship between enterprise digital transformation and ESG performance through mathematical theoretical model derivation and empirical test. This study also explores in detail how corporate digital transformation affects ESG performance, as well as discusses heterogeneity at the city, industry and firm levels. It is proposed that enterprises should take into account their own characteristics and carry out reasonable digital transformation according to their development needs.